


Under the Well

by CiaranthePage



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 07:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6558238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiaranthePage/pseuds/CiaranthePage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a legend about the well in the garden...<br/>I guess it was only a matter of time before I found out exactly what that entailed</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Well

There was a legend about the well in the garden.

 

The legend said that it belonged to a faerie lord, and that no human was allowed to draw water from it. Anyone who did would be taken to the land of faeries, never to return. Surely a tragic fate, for faeries did not eat or drink like humans did, and any human under their supervision was sure to die of starvation and thirst.

 

I heard this legend every year, when my grandmother told it at the dinner table on Christmas Eve. I never quite believed it, but my father did warn against drinking the water anyways, since it was probably toxic from all the metal that was down there. I didn’t ask him what metal, but that was mostly just because the reason was enough for me.

 

I played in the garden often. The well was many things to me -- never a place to get a drink of water, but a throne, a bed (there was a loose grate that could hold me above the opening), a stone that held my sword. Lots of kids came to our house in the summertime, since my mother watched the rest of the village children. Our house was the biggest besides the priests’ house, so when there was no work to be done or the children were too young to do what did they were taken to our house and dropped off for the day.

 

I was older than a lot of the kids, and those that weren’t were my age. So we played leader to the younger ones, and we got to play on the well the most often.

 

This was probably why children went missing every year.

 

It started when I was six. One of the oldest children, about nine years old and only at our house because they were too sickly at the time to work, was playing king of the castle with us. They stood on the grate, holding up their stick-sword and laughing as they commanded us to bow to the new king. And a cracking sound rang out, making them stop. A moment later, and the grate collapsed underneath them. They’d disappeared into the well, yelling the whole way down, and I remember not hearing them ever hit the bottom.

 

The other children would not touch the well all day, including me.

 

The child’s parents mourned, but only briefly, as the harvest season was coming quickly and there was work to be done. All the mothers and grandmothers warned their children not to go near the well anymore, and still sent them our way.

 

The blacksmith made a new grate, and… we got over our fears, climbed on the well again.

 

When I was seven, something happened again. It was late at night, and two of the older kids, one eight and one nine, convinced the rest of us to go out into the garden at night and pretend to be faerie creatures. We all agreed, having been kept in all day by the rain. We played in the garden, not climbing on the well in case it creaked and awoke my parents or the maid who slept in the kitchen.

 

The two children who had started it decided it was safe to climb onto the well, and did so. They stood on top, dancing in their own “ring”. Another joined them, laughing. We were all drunk from the lack of sleep and release of boredom, and none saw any problem with it.

 

Until, at least, the familiar cracking sound rang out again.

 

The bars, new and polished and clean, crumbled under the children. They all clung together, falling and screaming. Their screams faded, and once again, I never heard them hit the bottom. For a while after that, my father put up barbed wire around the well, and told us never to touch it again. He called it a “useless pile of stones”, and we weren’t allowed in the garden for a while.

 

Another legend started about the well, one that said it stole children to feed the faeries that owned it. I could not deny this rumor -- I’d watched the clean and new bars crumple under children who should have been able to stand on them.

 

We got over our fear. No more children disappeared while we had them under our care.

 

But four more did disappear.

 

I witnessed one -- the window in my room overlooked the garden, and I often looked out when I could not sleep. On one such night, I watched with hazy eyes as the shape of a child moved towards the well, and climbed on top. I saw them on their knees, staring into the well.

 

The bars fell away, and down they went.

 

The other two children no one saw, no one heard, no one could place. The last three simply disappeared from their beds in the middle of the night, and when the adults went to check on the well each time, the bars were perfect and sturdy. So no one thought any more of it.

 

I didn’t either.

 

But then I was nine, and I was alone.

 

It wasn’t quite the time for visitors, yet, and I was enjoying my time in our garden alone. I nearly forgot all the disappearances as I, dazed with imagination and having accidentally hit myself on the head with a stone, climbed onto the well to sit and rest. I sat on the edge, still somewhat wary.

 

There was a whisper. It came from the well, I knew it had -- so I turned to look, and twisted too far. I felt myself slide backwards, hit my head on the grate, and before I knew what was happening, I was falling. Down, down, down --

  
The air was cold, and the last thing I remembered before falling asleep was the light from the well fading, and the scent of the golden meadow flowers reaching my nose.


End file.
